Not Sleeping

I didn't sleep particularly well last night. I find with the bi-PAP I can't sleep on my back at all. I didn't sleep on my back, but I used that time to drift off when I used CPAP. But with the bi-PAP I find myself being jerked awake to take a breath, which tells me that I must be stopping.

Last night I rolled on my side and did go to sleep, but I woke up around 3:00 am when the dogs had to go out. My wife did the honors, but I had trouble, even laying on my side, getting back to sleep. Same problem of having my breathing stop and waking me up to get a breath.

This is not good. If it happens again tonight, I'm calling the Sleep Clinic tomorrow. I'm beginning to think I need to consider the surgical options. Hell, we've tried everything else, and nothing seems to work for very long, though this is the shortest failure I've been through.

Among the problems sleep apnea causes, there is depression, which I take medication for. And I'm feeling that the medication may be losing its effectiveness. My wife says I'm depressed, which is a good indicator. My writing in this space sure would seem to support that notion. Whatever the cause is the effect is that I'm tired, irritable, sullen, and withdrawn. I'm doing my best not to inflict myself on others while I'm in this state, and yet it still spills over.

I guess there's no cure for what ails me. There's nothing to do but hold it together as best I can.

---

It's later in the morning than when I wrote the above. I definitely feel the effects of a lack of good sleep and the pressure on my eyes from incipient glaucoma (or whatever it is). My eyes are raw and red, even with the eye drops the Ophthalmologist recommended. My concentration is not at its best, and I have a general feeling that I just don't care about much at the moment.

Everything requires effort, and the effort just seems like more than I can give. It takes all of my mental energy to write this. The only saving grace of writing in this blog is that it makes me 'look' busy to anyone who passes by. (Though if they look at the screen they won't recognize what I'm doing as anything work-related, I'm sure.) I have trouble even caring about that. All that is going on inside me combines to make me just not care about much. I just want to go home, climb into bed, and sleep it all away.

I'm scheduled to see my psychologist next week. Should I wait or should I schedule something for this week, if he has an opening? The easy thing to do, the thing I prefer to do, is wait. Doing nothing is easier than doing anything.

---

It's now afternoon, and I've actually done a small amount of the work they pay me to do. I have a roadblock in getting with someone who has information I need. Nothing unusual, just a nuisance.

I feel less foggy than I did, but I'm still not motivated to do much. I've been doing additional research on surgical options for treating sleep apnea. Frankly, it looks like the simplest option is a tracheostomy (sp?). Yeah, the old hole in the throat. Apparently, you can cover it over during the day and open it at night for sleeping. That sounds promising. Their are two side-effects. One is that it requires careful daily cleaning to avoid infection. The other is that it is cosmetically unattractive. But since I'm no beauty to start with, and I'm not likely to get better with age, It still sounds like an attractive option. If I go back to see the sleep doctor this week, surgery is definitely going to come up. (If last night was an aberration, then I'll start feeling better and surgery becomes a moot point.)

I want to recommend a new web site I found on the topic of sleep apnea, http://sleepapnea.org. It is very concise and useful. WebMD, http://www.webmd.com is very thorough, but it's also very dense in places, and it's not always easy to find exactly what you're looking for.